The International Culinary Center is celebrating 30 years in New York City--and four years in Campbell.

"We think Campbell is the perfect place for a culinary school," said founder and CEO Dorothy Cann Hamilton.

The school has three tracks--culinary, wine and pastry--and a special Italian course where students spend 10 weeks learning Italian cooking and language and four months studying abroad in Italy.

Bruce McCann, president of the Campbell school, said the past four years have been spent adapting the New York model to California. The two schools are similar, but the NYC school offers a restaurant management course and a Spanish culinary program.

However, there are many perks to studying in Campbell, such as student access to nearby wineries and top-notch restaurants in San Francisco, Hamilton said. Students studying in Campbell also have the opportunity to study fish sustainability at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and industrial farming at Bolthouse Farms. At the Campbell school, there is more emphasis on farm-to-table practices and the students take advantage of the California wealth of agriculture and wine, McCann said.

Hamilton decided to launch a French culinary school in New York City in 1984 after visiting the top cooking school in Paris. The first weekend her school was open, Julia Child visited.

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"She heard we had this French school in New York and she walked in, bigger than life," Hamilton said. The next week, Child arranged for the school to be profiled on "Good Morning America."

"That's really how the school got its jump start," Hamilton said.

Hamilton likened Julia Child to a "fairy godmother" of the school. "She became a patron of the school the rest of her days," she said.

Hamilton said the school's cirriculum is based on classic French techniques.

"That's why our students can go out to almost any type of restaurant. They have the classic foundation," Hamilton explained.

The school, previously known as the French Culinary Institute, was renamed three years ago so as to not limit the types of food studied at the school. The school launched an Italian cuisine program seven years ago.

"No one wants to study Italian at the French Culinary Institute," Hamilton said with a big laugh.

Before the institute came to Campbell, the building, located at 700 W. Hamilton Ave., housed another culinary school, the Professional Culinary Institute.

Today, there are more than a hundred students from all over the world at the Campbell location at any given time, according to Hamilton.

"Campbell, to us, is a gem," Hamilton said.

Hamilton said most students who attend the institute are career-changers, although some are recent high school graduates. Most of the programs are six months long, but there is also a part-time program where students take classes three nights a week over nine months.

Full-time students spend four months in the classroom and two months in an externship.

"Eighty percent of students in the externships get offered a job at their restaurant," Hamilton said. "It's a very nice transition, especially for people who want to get back into the work force."

McCann said the externships are at "virtually every quality restaurant in the area," he said, referencing the Village Bistro on Santana Row, the Village Pub in Woodside and the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay. Some students even do their externships at Google, he said.

Students taking the seven-month Italian program spend 10 weeks studying Italian cooking and language before studying abroad in Italy. There they spend 10 weeks at an Italian school before being placed in a restaurant. While abroad, they visit cheese factories and Italian wineries.

Ingredients are important to Italian cooking, according to Hamilton.

"We realized...you can't really study Italian cooking in America," she said. "You have to get up close and personal with the products."

"It's fantastic," she said. "When you come out of that, every Italian restaurant wants to hire you."